FSFE Newsletter – March 2014

The UK attempts to break free from vendor lock-in

The UK government is making progress towards less vendor lock-in. In
January, they published
a few principles for future government IT contracts. They want to break the
dominance of the big software companies who provided the vast majority of
software and services to the UK government.

Now they are asking for comments on the standards they should use for
"sharing or collaborating with government documents". Among other things, the
government proposes to make ODF the sole standard for office-type documents.
The FSFE has submitted comments
on a proposal by the UK government to use only document formats based
on Open Standards in the future. Microsoft
also submitted a lengthy comment, urging the government to include
OOXML in its list of standards, to which
we responded as well.

Why Open Standards aren't enough: the minimal principle

Although a good data-format can only be an Open Standard, FSFE's Bernhard Reiter argues that
this requirement alone is not enough. Originally written for last year's Document Freedom Day in German, the
article "The minimal
principle: because being an open standard is not enough" is now available
in English. In a nutshell Bernhard argues that the data-format needs to solve a
problem adequately: It should be a good fit from a functional point of view, as
well as on a technical level. In order to judge this, there are a number of
things to consider: efficiency, maintainability, accessibility, extensibility,
learnability, simplicity, longevity and a few more. Two central questions posed
are: How well does the data-format solve the problem and --more interesting--
is there a simpler format that could solve the problem just as well?

Lots of motivation for Free Software contributors

On February 14th, people all around the world followed our suggestions to express their
gratitude and appreciation to Free Software and its contributors on " I love
Free Software" day 2014! Blog entries, e-mails to developers, a comic, a
picture by the leadership of the German Green party, an #ilovefs festival,
blogs dedicated to Free Software in general and developers in particular, and a
lot of microblog messages were dedicated to Free Software. We were overwhelmed
by the resonance.

Contributors of Free Software projects work hard to ensure our freedom and
on this day surely many of them gained new motivation. Thanks to everybody who
participated in this year's #ilovefs campaign and if you have not been
involved enjoy some of the many
love declarations we collected.

Something completely different

On Document Freedom Day (March 26), FSFE and the Greens/EFA group in the
European Parliament are organising
an event in the European Parliament to discuss how cryptography can help us
break the grip of the surveillance state. The draft program includes Werner
Koch (of GnuPG fame, and one of FSFE’s founders), Karen O’Donoghue (Internet
Society), French journalist Amaelle Guitton, and Swedish IT security expert
Joachim Strömbergson.

Fighting compulsory routers, raising awareness about "Secure Boot", a
joint motion against software patents in the German Parliament, supporting a
working group in the German parliament about Free Software, raising questions
about Free Software in several elections, organising compliance workshops,
and lots of talks and events. Read the 2013 summary
from FSFE's German team.

Get active: Participate in Document Freedom Day!

There has been so many news about Open Standards in this edition. Do you
want to help us to promote them? If so, Document Freedom Day on 26 March is a
good occasion for that. Last year we had 59
events in 30 countries all over the world. This year Sam Tuke and the
DFD campaign team aim for 75 events, but they need your help.

Donirajte

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